A fifth-grade classroom emerges as an existential limbo in "Gidion's Knot."

Mindless bureaucracy, cyberbullying and violence thrive amid the chalkboards and playgrounds in Johnna Adams' intense new play. Insightfully directed by Jon Tracy in its regional premiere at Berkeley's Aurora Theatre, "Gidion's Knot" is a one-act debate play, a taut 80-minute mystery that keeps us guessing about where to lay blame when children go astray.

Adams' text is shot through with silences, some calm, others trembling with menace. The first thing you notice about this middle school parent-teacher conference is what's left unsaid. Heather (the always astute Stacy Ross) is a harried public schoolteacher, grading papers under the harsh glare of fluorescent lights. She tidies her classroom, paces, stifles a cry. Something is eating away at her peace of mind.

Her day doesn't get any brighter when Corryn (a riveting Jamie Jones) walks in to keep an appointment about her 11-year-old son, Gidion, who was recently suspended from school by Heather. Corryn is at a loss. A woman accustomed to being smart and tough, she finds herself reduced to a raw nerve. Jones perfectly captures the seething rage of a parent desperate to assign guilt for her son's pain.

Corryn is also a teacher, a professor of English literature given to lecturing those around her, and she refuses to let Heather off the hook over what happened to her son in class. Was he a victim or a bully? Why didn't someone warn her what might happen?

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She hunts for clues everywhere. On Facebook she sees posts that lead her to suspect her son may have been belittled by another boy in class. In Gidion's desk, she finds a note from a girl that sends her down another path of conjecture.

One of the most terrifying aspects of the piece is the realistic portrayal of how little a parent may understand her child. Adams' depiction of the American educational system is equally unsettling. No one will give this mother the answer she seeks because everyone is terrified of a lawsuit.

The doubts explode as these two women face off in a series of confrontations that are remarkable for their ambiguity. Pauses speak volumes here. The playwright leaves it up to the actors to shade each moment with complexity. Ross channels subtlety and restraint. Jones exudes the unbearable anguish of having to let your child suffer.

It would be unfair to give away any of the hairpin turns in this plot, but suffice it to say that Heather and Corryn do not see eye to eye on issues of art, freedom of speech and the nature of childhood. Adams delivers an acute indictment of the failures of the school system as well as a moving meditation on grief of all kinds. If the playwright verges into the didactic here and there, Tracy's staging navigates the emotions as adroitly as the ideas.

While it is clear that both women care deeply about children, it is also apparent that they may both be culpable for what went wrong -- and that there is no way to untangle "Gidion's Knot."